“They escaped?” rumbled Guthlach. “What can they tell us?” He hit fist on wall; it thundered. “How I’ve dreamed o’ this!” he roared.
“Slow and easy, now,” cautioned the hunter. “They’ve had a dreadful time, plain to see.”
The wife waited on her knees, patient as the rising moon. Runt took a step toward her, and another. Squeaky went past him, hand in hand with Cockeye. They stood atremble, but they stood, while the wife rose to embrace them.
“Yes, let them heal,” she said through her tears. “Let them talk to us when they’re ready, when the leaves are green again.”
Thus begins “The Wrath of the Fathers,” Aeland’s epic.
In the Season of the Dressing of the Wells
John Brunner
Ears numb with the thunder of exploding shells, eyes stinging and throat raw from poison gas, Ernest Peake forced himself to grope for the bell-pull alongside his bed. He had woken with his fists clenched and his heart pounding, and he felt so exhausted he might as well not have slept at all.
Better if I hadn’t, perhaps …
The door opened. Tinkler, who had been his batman in France and Flanders, entered and drew the curtains. As daylight flooded in he said, “Another bad night, sir.”
It wasn’t a question. The tangled state of the bedclothes was evidence.
Among pillboxes on the bedside table stood a bottle of tincture of valerian, a glass, and a jug of water. Measuring out the prescribed dose, he diluted, stirred and offered it. Resignedly Ernest gulped it down. It did seem to be helping, and Dr. Castle had shown him an article describing its success in other cases of shellshock …
Every one of them alone like me, inside the prison of his skull.
“Would you like your tea now, sir?” Tinkler inquired.
“Yes, and run my bath. And I’ll take breakfast up here.”
“Very good, sir. What shall I lay out?”
Rising with difficulty, silently cursing the bullet-shattered kneecap that made his left leg permanently stiff, Ernest gazed at the clear sky and shrugged.
“Looks like a day for blazer and flannels.”
“With respect, sir, it is Sunday, and—”
“To hell with what day it is!” Ernest roared, and was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry. My nerves are on edge again. Bad dreams. You can go to church if you want.”
“Yes, sir,” Tinkler murmured. “Thank you, sir.”
Waiting for his tea, Ernest stared glumly at the sunlit view from his window. The grounds of Welstock Hall had—like so many others—been turned over to vegetables during the War, and those parts which even his patriotic uncle Sir Roderick had been unwilling to see dug and trenched had been left to the weeds. But there were signs of a return to normal. Of course, staff was almost impossible to get, but one elderly man and two fifteen-year-old boys were doing their best. The tennis-court was not yet restored, but the lawn was neatly mown and set with croquet hoops, and a good half of the surrounding beds were bright with flowers. The tower of the church was visible from here, though its nave was hidden by dense-leaved trees and shrubs, as was all but a corner of the adjacent vicarage.
Normally it was an idyllic prospect, and one that had often made him wonder what it would have been like to spend his childhood here instead of in India, educated by tutors. Uncle Roderick and Aunt Aglaia, who were childless, had repeatedly suggested he be sent home to school and spend the holidays at Welstock. But his parents had always declined the offer, and at heart he wasn’t sorry. So much more had changed in England than was ever likely to in that far-off, ancient, and slow-moving country a quarter of the world away, so he had far less to regret the passing of.
Today, though, sunk as he was in the recollected misery of nightmare, the very pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan could not have dispersed the clouds that shrouded his mind, wounded as surely by the War as his stiff leg.
Tinkler delivered the tea-tray. Before heading for the bathroom, he inquired, “Have you made any plans for today, sir?”
Ernest turned from the window with a sigh. His eye fell on the folding easel propped against a table that bore a large stiff-covered portfolio of paper, a box of water-colours, and other accoutrements proper to an artist.
Shall I ever become one? Even a bad one? They say I have a certain talent … But I can’t seem to see any longer. I can’t see what’s there, only what’s lying in ambush behind it. All the hidden horrors of the world …
“I’ll probably go out sketching,” he said at random.
“Should I ask Cook to prepare a lunch-basket?”
“I don’t know!” Ernest barely prevented himself from snapping a second time. “I’ll decide after breakfast.”
“Very good, sir,” Tinkler responded, and was gone.
Bathed, shaved, dressed, but having hardly touched his breakfast, Ernest made his slow way across the entrance hall. Every least action nowadays cost him vast mental effort, and as for making major decisions … Preoccupied with his bad manners towards Tinkler, who had stuck by him as loyally as any friend well could, he was within arm’s reach of the door that led to the terrace and garden beyond when a harsh unwelcome voice bade him good morning.
Turning, across the parquet floor he confronted his Aunt Aglaia, clad in the unrelieved black she had adopted on her husband’s death from influenza. That had been three years ago, so the customary time for mourning was long past, but she seemed determined to do as Queen Victoria had done for Albert. There was no resemblance in any other respect; the little monarch would barely have come up to her ample and efficiently-corseted bosom.
Worse still, her attitudes appeared to have become as rigid as her undergarments. On the few occasions he had met her when on leave from the Front, while Uncle Roderick was still alive, Ernest had thought of her as tolerably pleasant, if somewhat over-conscious of her status as wife of the Lord of the Manor. Now, however, she had taken to describing herself as the châtelaine of Welstock, hence the official guardian of not merely her estate but also the lives and behaviour of her tenants and dependants. Among whom, very much against his will, was Ernest.
Before he had time to return her greeting, she went on, “That is scarcely suitable attire for Divine Service!”
Morbid religiosity was among her new attributes. She had reinstituted “family” prayers, which Ernest resignedly attended on the grounds that it was “not done” to reveal to servants any disagreement between those who employed them. But he thought it was so much cant.
Now, through the open door of the breakfast-room, he could see a maid clearing the table. Keeping his voice down in case the girl was in earshot, he said as civilly as possible, “I’m not coming to church, Aunt Aglaia.”